Shari Arison

(1957 - )

Shari Arison is an Israeli-American businesswoman and billionaire best known as the owner of Carnival Cruise Lines and Israel's Bank HaPoalim.

Arison (born 1957) was born in New York to famous Israeli businessman Ted Arison who was the founder of a number of international cruise lines. In 1966, when her parents divored, Shari moved to Israel with her mother, where she still lives today. At the age of eighteen, after returning to live with her father in the States for a number of years, Arison moved back to Israel where she was drafted in to the Israeli Defense Forces.

In 2005, Arison was voted the 56th-greatest Israeli of all time in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine the 200 Greatest Israelis.

As of March 2012, Forbes magazine listed Arison at number 288 on its list of the world's wealthiest billionaires, with a net worth of nearly $4 billion, down nearly a billion dollars since 2011. She is the fifth wealthiest Israeli citizen and the richest Israeli woman. In August 2012, Forbes listed Arison number 64 on their list of the Top 100 most influential women in the world.

The majority of Arison's fortune was bequethed to her by her late father in 1999. She is also the largest stockholder in Bank HaPoalim, Israel's largest private bank, and in Israel's largest construction firm.

Arison has been married three times, most recently to Israeli businessman Ofer Glazer, and has four children.